Does This Make You Homesick? A friend and I saw the movie "Last Chance for Harvey" at the theater today. I liked it. The acting skills of Emma Thompson and Dustin Hoffman turned it from a predictable, schmaltsy, romantic comedy into something worthwhile. I would give it a 3.75 out of a possible 5. That's a pretty good rating from me. So go see it, or rent it!
I rarely go to the movies as I am madly in love with NetFlix where I can sit in the comfort of my own home, on my own sofa, with my 32-inch TV and nobody around me munching popcorn, rustling candy wrappers or TALKING! But as my initial plans fell through, then my secondary plans also didn't pan out, this seemed like an opportunity to spend some time, share an event, with somebody I don't see very often.
As the movie takes place in London, my friend asked, "Does this make you homesick?" The answer is yes and no. I actually love living in Culver City. Maybe one day I'll write about the hundreds of reasons why.
But there is a part of me that wonders what my life would be like if my parents had stayed in England instead of emigrating to the US. I didn't want to come here... both times. I was a child the first time, a teenager the second. My life was in England. To this very day I feel like a person without a country. Even though I've lived here all my adult life, when I'm here I'm English. When I am in England I'm American. You can't possibly understand if you haven't lived it and I no longer attempt or care to explain.
So, I enjoy looking at this Victorian tile in my collection that came from a house built in 1880, in Worthing, the last town we lived in before coming to America the first time.
In the 1700s Worthing became a popular seaside resort attracting wealthy and aristocratic visitors. I liked living there. Probably my favorite of all the many places we lived in England. Maybe it reminds me of Culver City in some ways. A small town but a lot of history. When we lived there I believe the population was about 70,000 whereas Culver City is currently around 45,000.
So I am always homesick for England. But when I am away from Culver City I'm homesick for this little town too. And, perhaps I'm fortunate that I can be homesick for two places!
You can see some of my other tiles at http://www.tilelove.com/.
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(photo copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Ladybug, Ladybird, don't fly away!My decision to write about Alice, Artist, Goddess of Nature has made my blog so much more fun for me! And as Alice is so prolific it has given me a ton of material to write about.

Every year Alice entrusts me with a nest of baby ladybugs (in England these insects are called ladybirds which I like a lot more). They literally crawl out of the woodwork near the window in my office and cling precariously to the screen.

(I wondered what that strange noise was, it's the sound of rain falling on my roof... yippeeeeeeee!)

I have to get my ladybug catcher... an old prescription bottle... coax them into the bottle, and release them on a hibiscus plant on the deck. Some fly off immediately. But some stay around for days as there is a veritable feast of aphids (which I believe they eat) on the flowers.

Above is a photo of one of those ladies who chose to hang around for a while... along with a visiting cricket.

Of course, ladybugs are a symbol of good luck, so I feel especially lucky to be in charge of these beautiful little creatures. Did you know their red coloring actually scares off predators?

If memory serves me, the ladybugs usually arrive in the spring. But here they are in January. There were only about a dozen over a period of several days, whereas in the spring I have to transport that many in a day over a week. So perhaps this was just a trial run.

(photo copyright roslyn m wilkins)

The Unbeautiful Sky

Most mornings I like to greet the day (after feeding the cats, that is) by standing out on my roof deck, cup of coffee in hand, looking for that perfect sunrise with wondrous splashes of reds, oranges, yellows.... and sometimes disappointed when it doesn't appear. Today when I walked out there the sky was filled with ominous black and grey clouds. Not my picture of the perfect sunrise at all. But as I stood watching the clouds subtly change shade and hue I thought about all the elements and events that had to come together to create this moment, and I realized, of course, this was one more masterpiece from the brush of Alice, Artist, Goddess of Nature. How boring it would be if every sunrise was picture postcard "perfect." This sky was so much more interesting and I was grateful for the opportunity to enjoy it. The unbeautiful became beautiful.

(photo copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Lampposts, Hearst and Vanity
I ended up, through a curious set of circumstances, at San Simeon in February of last year. It was my first visit to Hearst Castle in over twenty years. Aside from the buildings and artwork I enjoyed the film we were shown about Hearst's life. What I didn't realize before was what an enormous influence his mother had on his love of collecting art as she herself was an art collector and connoisseur who took her son on European travels.
On Saturday I visited LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) with eight members of the Culver City Art Group. Although I visit LACMA throughout the year with different friends or by myself, going with a group lends another dynamic. We headed straight for the "Hearst the Collector" exhibit. I was impressed with the eclecticism of the collection. From the suits of armor to the fabulous tapestries to the paintings and ceramic dishes... it was interesting to see all the pieces out of context in the museum setting. Of course, Hearst had several grand homes to furnish and show off his collecting prowess. It seems this alone would fully occupy most people's lives, certainly it would mine, with or without assistants, let alone running a business empire! The Hearst exhibit ends February 1st so you need to hurry over there.
The other exhibit I enjoyed was "Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008." This runs through March 1. I'm not that intrigued or interested in the whole celebrity culture. But I have to admit, many of these photographs caught my attention... they were works of art, capturing people at a place and time that told a story. One of my favorites: White-haired Tony Curtis, Madonna and Mick Jagger are sitting at the same table at an awards ceremony. Curtis is all over Madonna, couldn't be any closer if he was sitting on her lap. At the other end of the table is Mick Jagger. The expression on his face is palpable: What the HELL (probably a different word with the same number of syllables) am I DOING here?
Don't leave yet, the best is yet to come! My brain can only take in so much at the museum, so after that I was done with exhibits. I went outside to my favorite part of LACMA, the new entrance with the installation by Chris Burden which incorporates more than two hundred restored cast-iron lampposts from Los Angeles County. As I roam around LA I am always fascinated by the many different types of lampposts, not the modern, boring posts, but the lamps from decades ago that still adorn the streets of our fair city.

I wandered through this forest of lampposts taking some snapshots. You can see them all here should you be interested. (Click on the "go" icon at the bottom right of the page, it may take a while to get started.)

Another satisfying afternoon at LACMA (not to mention another great Cabo San Lucas salad at Marie Callendars afterwards)!

(Photo copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Alice Paints the Sky

I was going to start a new blog but I decided it was really part of this one. I am a stalker, yes, I have come out of the closet to admit it. No, this isn't like when the original Star Trek first hit TV and my friend and I discovered Leonard Nimoy lived in our neighborhood and we sat outside his house for hours and hours and hours evening after evening after evening waiting for just a glimpse of those pointy ears in the window... (Of course, I was just in diapers then and had to crawl there on my hands and knees). Oh, am I really admitting this, yes, I must come clean so I can move on with my life!

Okay, so now I stalk the Goddess of Nature. Or more particularly, her artwork. I can't reveal her real name as that would be an invasion of privacy. She has been known by various pseudonyms throughout the eons of her existence. I am going to call her Alice, after an aunt. I don't why this struck me as appropriate, especially as my aunt changed her name decades ago for reasons I don't understand. But I just like the idea of the Goddess of Nature being named Alice. Her business card will now read Alice, Artist, Goddess of Nature. Yes, that sounds good!

So what artwork does Alice have to show us today? Of course, you've already seen it... the moon over Culver City. I'm grateful to Alice and the universe for my roof deck. The night after the full moon the sky was really spectacular. I was out on the deck about 8:00pm. It was like somebody turned on all the Christmas lights in the sky, the stars were so bright. Then from the northwest I saw a line of planes coming into LAX all heading towards the moon like moths to a flame. I could have grabbed my camera and shot a movie but it wouldn't have been the same. But it will live in my mind, and maybe some day, a painting?

(Photo copyright roslyn m wilkins)

Evening's Light Not Yet Gone
Yesterday I was watching a documentary on Georgia O'Keeffe. I enjoy renting artists' biographies from NetFlix, both artists I have never heard of before or don't know much about, and artists whose work I am very familiar with, as there is always something new to learn. For instance, I knew O'Keeffe's eyesight was failing, but I didn't realize she had no central vision, only peripheral vision, caused by macular degeneration, for almost the last twenty years of her life, but she managed to continue working. (She died in 1986 at the age of 98.)
The reason I thought of Georgia O'Keeffe is because I learned from this video that one of her teachers did not believe in the method of copying the old masters to learn how to paint. (I'm sure some art historian out there can tell this story better than I can...) To paraphrase really badly, he told her that to create artwork that anybody could paint, is not art... that REAL art comes from your own vision... from within. I couldn't agree more.
One standard for judging art that I hear over and over again is "Wow, what a great painting, it looks just like a photograph!" In my opinion this is not a compliment. If that's the case, why not hang the darn photograph on the wall and done with it! In 1609 painting a scene as if it was real life was a worthy ambition. But in 2009 we have things called cameras for that! I love landscapes but I really don't care about an artist's technical ability to draw or paint a plant or a mountain (unless it's done to illustrate a technical publication, then please, make it look as realistic as possible.)
When I look at a landscape painting (or any kind of artwork) I am looking for the artist's own interpretation. Georgia O'Keeffe was certainly a master at that.
Lately I've been following Katherine Keane's journey through landscape painting. To call her works landscapes is probably a misnomer. "Mystical-scapes" would be a better description. Of that ouevre, I believe her latest painting, "Evening's Light Not Yet Gone," is her best. Although I have liked all her paintings in this series, some in the past have been somewhat dark and mysterious. (Or perhaps I was going through a dark, mysterious patch in my own life, trying to figure out some things about myself, and that's how I interpreted them.... but to me, that's what art is all about, the artist's take on life and then the viewer's take on what the artist is conveying... oh, it gets complicated!). One of the reasons I like Katherine's paintings is that they always tell a story... for me, they bring to mind some of Ray Bradbury's tales like "The October Country."
Anyway, the bottom line is I really love this new painting. I had the opportunity to admire it at the TAG show last night (which runs through January 31). This is no "photographic" painting. Katherine's emotion and personal style come through loud and clear. In the painting, I see the storm clouds clearing away. What was a cold, rainy, turbulent day has become a calm, peaceful setting with the sun breaking through just in time to shed some light and warmth on the scene before it disappears into the dark night. I have no idea what the artist intended, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it!
As an ending note, I must mention that I always enjoy the shows at TAG (see links above for more info). There were several other pieces that caught my attention and I woke up this morning thinking about them. But you will have to attend the show yourself and figure out which ones those are (they might surprise you, but you will never know for sure.............!).